

19.— THE NEGRO IN AMERICA. 

 By T. Lane Carter. 



[Abstract.] 



The first African slaves were taken to the New World by the 

 Spaniards to work the gold and silver mines, as the Red Men had 

 proved utter failures as labourers. Eventually the British excelled 

 the Spaniards as slave dealers. The important part played by Great 

 Britain in the introduction and spread of slavery in America was 

 forgotten during the 19th Century, when the children of the men 

 who had done so much to introduce negro slavery vehemently 

 denounced the South for this institution. The British Parliament 

 watched with zealous care the interests of the slave trade ; slaves were 

 forced on the Colonists for years after they cried out against the 

 institution. 



It should be remembered that the Civil War was not fought to 

 liberate the slaves. No man in America dreamed of final emancipa- 

 tion, when hostilities commenced in i860. Lincoln's Inaugural 

 Address contains the declaration that " he had no purpose, directly 

 or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States 

 where it exists." At first Lincoln leaned to gradual emancipation, and 

 as the war dragged on, he conceived the idea of doing away with the 

 institution of slavery, which had brought such misery on the country. 

 On January ist, 1863, he signed the final Edict of Freedom. When 

 the war came to an end there were four millions of freedmen in the 

 South. The ex-slaves were entirely ignorant, untrained as a rule, 

 save for servile occupations. Childlike in mind and habits, they 

 interpreted their new liberty to mean release from restraint. In 

 1865 they began to wander away from the plantations, to enjoy the 

 delights of idleness, to indulge thievish and immoral propensities to 

 the full, and to work no more and no longer than thev found agree- 

 able. The dominant party at the North, the Republican, never 

 rested until the whites of the South, the ex-Confederates, were dis- 

 franchised, and the negroes were enfranchised. 



After the Civil War the victors did everything in their power 

 to lift up the ex-slaves, and to debase and humiliate their 

 own race living in the South. Wholesale confiscation of 

 the Southerners' property was carried out in every State, 

 and the lower class of politicians from the North (the " carpet 

 baggers ") promised the negroes " forty acres and a mule " for their 

 votes. Red and blue pegs were sold to the negroes with which to 

 mark off their forty acres. A pretended deed for land, sold to 

 ignorant negroes, commenced as follows : — 



" Know all men by these presents, that a nought is a nought 

 and a figure is a figure, all for the white man and none for the 

 nigger. And whereas Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, 

 so also have I lifted this damed old nigger out of four dollars and 

 six bits. Amen ! Selah ! " 



In spite of desperate efforts to make the negro a permanent part 

 of the political life of the countrv, the results attained bv nefrro 



